The earnest monochrome design, the stage shots with the players notably absent, the portraits with the downcast eyes, all summon an austere melancholy reflecting much of this extraordinary music. The Fripp/Travis coalition is a gentler affair than, for example, Fripp and Eno, but this isn't all gossamer whimsy: the duo's facility for moving from guileless intimacies to spine cracking themes of volcanic proportions is now a given. This multi-format release may not have the unity, the rich variations of, say, the Coventry recordings, but such speculations are pointless: Discretion is studded with its own discrete happenings, moments that exist perfectly where and as they are. And if it does threaten at times to disappear up its own arch, then ‘Duet For The End of Time’, (eat your prog heart out, Messiaen) brings us back to the reality of dark souls. And to conclude is a gorgeous, formerly rarely available ‘Rhapsody On The Theme From Starless’, a sublime re-working of that oh so familiar tune but now wrapped in loss and yearning. Compare and contrast to Fripp & Eno, Live In Paris 28.05.1975, also available now.